Press

Smith Stag, LLC in New Orleans filed a class action suit last month of behalf of ten African American, Standard Heights residents and seven minor children, sickened by the June 14, 2012 leak. Early in the morning of the accident, a bleeder plug, which slowly drains off gas and liquids at the complex’s Aromatics Production Unit, leaked benzene and other hazardous substances.

“On the day of the incident and in a report to DEQ six days later, Exxon grossly underestimated the amount and types of hazardous substances emitted,” attorney Stuart Smith said last week. The suit, seeking compensation for personal injuries, pain and suffering and property damage, will be tried in state district court in East Baton Rouge in a year or two. Residents of Dixie and other communities near the plant can join the petitioners, Smith said. “It’s time that ExxonMobil faces the music, acknowledges people’s losses and then moves them out of that neighborhood,” he said.

Last week, attorney Stuart Smith with Smith Stag, L.L.C. in New Orleans, said “Halliburton is most likely talking with the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee,” a group of attorneys appointed by Judge Barbier to represent businesses and residents with claims. “It’s not unusual in a case like this, where there’s been some significant discovery abuse, to try to settle claims,” Smith said. The abuse centers on Halliburton recently revealing cement evidence that probably should have been turned over to the U.S. Justice Dept. two years ago.

“It appears that the court was unhappy with Halliburton’s actions during the discovery phase of the litigation,” Smith said, referring to phase one of the trial. He said the benefit to Halliburton of settling private claims would be to minimize uncertainty about their cost.

Fears are mounting that the Bayou Corne sinkhole area methane gas could burst through the ground with explosive force, according to officials and one of the nation’s top environmental legal experts Monday, speaking about what has become a grave violation of health and security human rights …

“State and Texas Brine officials knew about potential problems at the dome more than a year and a half ago, and the state Department of Environmental Quality was painfully slow to respond to the first reports of tremors and bubbling gases this summer.”

In Bayou Corne, workers began this weekend drilling three vent wells.

“Let’s pray that the efforts to reduce the pressure are not too little — or too late,” Smith said.

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating an oily sheen in the Gulf of Mexico spotted last month near the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill site at Macondo Well 40 miles south of the Mississippi River, a spokesman said Wednesday, revealing a little more of the fossil fuel catastrophe and subsequent coverup…

“Here we go again,” says New Orleans-based environmental attorney Stuart Smith. “Federal officials acknowledge that they’re investigating a new oil sheen in the vicinity of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers and spewed 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico…

As alluded to in NOAA’s incident report, oil leaks in the area have happened before in the time since the unchecked flow of oil from the damaged rig was first capped in the summer of 2010. Last August, officials confirmed a fresh leak of sweet Louisiana crude from the Macondo field where the BP rig had exploded. Both BP and federal officials tried to initially deny the problem when the story was broken on this blog, but shifted gear after pilot Bonny Schumaker from the Wings of Care, followed by independent journalists, confirmed the oil sheen and the pungent aroma of crude which was fingerprinted fresh Macondo oil by several laboratories.

Large amounts of weathered oil and tar were washed up after Hurricane Isaac struck land in the Gulf of Mexico, showing that the spill hasn’t been contained and is still affecting the region, Stuart Smith, a lawyer for hundreds of Gulf Coast property owners and fishing and tourism businesses, said in a letter to the U.S. magistrate judge overseeing litigation over the 2010 spill.

The Macondo well gushed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 straight days, according to Reuters, fouling four Gulf Coast states’ shorelines. The well capping was never successful, according to researchers, the late Mat Simmons and attorney Stuart Smith who have evidenced BP’s oil fingerprints continuing to wash ashore after the initial 87 days.

“BP sprayed millions of gallons of chemical dispersants on the spill, causing oil to sink to the bottom of the Gulf,” reports Reuters. The U.S. military aided BP in the Gulf carpet-bombing operation.

Large amounts of weathered oil and tar were washed up after Hurricane Isaac struck land in the Gulf of Mexico, showing that the spill hasn’t been contained and is still affecting the region, Stuart Smith, a lawyer for hundreds of Gulf Coast property owners and fishing and tourism businesses, said in a letter to the U.S. magistrate judge overseeing litigation over the 2010 spill.

BP’s contention that significant future contamination from the oil spill is unlikely is a “ridiculous proposition,” Smith said in the Sept. 10 letter filed in federal court in New Orleans today. “The landfall of Hurricane Isaac has changed the settlement landscape.”

“I believe there will be be significant fallout, as these allegations also stand as proof that BP’s settlement terms are far from adequate,” attorney Stuart Smith, who represents plaintiffs in the BP settlement with individuals, wrote. “The people of the Gulf deserve much better.”

“It’s hard to stress the critical importance of these court filings by the U.S. Justice Department and the state of Alabama,” environmental attorney Stuart Smith said Wednesday in a blog post. “They stand as powerful confirmation of some of the issues that led me to start writing this blog in the first place — proof that both the gross misconduct of BP and the ongoing harm that it has caused to the Gulf and to the coastline are much greater than the American public realizes.

“I believe there will be be significant fallout, as these allegations also stand as proof that BP’s settlement terms are far from adequate. The people of the Gulf deserve much better,” said Smith, a leading human rights advocate based in New Orleans.

New Orleans attorney Stuart Smith, who litigates against major oil companies, believes the burden of proof about where the oil is coming from lies on BP.

“Our worst fears have proven true,” Smith said of the seep. “We have a chronic leak scenario caused by the Macondo well, and it is time for the feds and BP to come clean and tell the American public the truth. Unless/until the government and BP explain in a verifiable manner what the source of this oil is, in my opinion any thoughts of settlement are way premature.”

“This is the biggest liability suit in the history of the world,” New Orleans environmental litigation attorney Stuart Smith said. “Just writing a check for this is not that easy. The damages are still occurring, and the oil is still washing up on the shores. The challenge for BP to settle now is there are too many moving parts.”

New Orleans lawyer Stuart Smith still has about 1,000 clients who have not resolved their oil spill claims. He said he’ll be looking for the opportunity for claimants to be compensated fairly based on their individual circumstances, relief for the “hundreds and hundreds” who have gotten sick from oil exposure and for BP to remove the confidentiality agreements that it made university researchers sign so their findings can be made public in any deal.

Stuart Smith, a New Orleans attorney who has represented south Louisiana landowners for two decades, said claims that plaintiff attorneys are flooding courts with unwarranted lawsuits are false. Most suits cost more than $200,000 in environmental audits and expert witness fees alone. If the pollution isn’t real, there’s no point bringing the case to court, Smith said.

“The truth is (companies) don’t want to pay. They want to be able to bury pollution on the landowner’s property. That wasn’t part of the contract,” Smith said.

Stuart Smith is a preeminent Environmental Attorney in New Orleans and has been deeply involved in determining the true extent of the BP Spill since day one. It was Smith who first reported the fresh oil slick coming from the source this summer and used his considerable resources to determine that the oil wears a “fingerprint” match to Macondo crude.

Tickell was joined by attorney Stuart Smith, as well as Hugh Kaufman, an EPA policy analyst who blew the whistle on the effects of Corexit as an oil dispersant in the Gulf as well as 9/11 cleanup workers being exposed to toxins. Dean Blanchard, owner of Blanchard Seafood and is profiled in the film, lamented the past worst shrimp season ever. “Our beach on Grand Isle was one of the most fertile fishing grounds,” he said. “Now it’s producing less than 1 percent of the shrimp it produced before BP.

This Friday afternoon at 2 pm at the contemporary arts center, key figures involved in the documentary will be speaking about the film and the information they have uncovered. Sundance award winners director Josh Tickell and co-director Rebecca Hall Tickell, environmental law specialist and film participant Stuart Smith, and local researchers, environmentalists and seafood industry representatives will discuss the film and its dramatic revelations.

Stuart Smith, a New Orleans-based attorney, is handling more than 1,000 cases against BP in the wake of the oil disaster. Smith has been involved in litigation against the oil and gas industry for 25 years, and recently told Al Jazeera that he believes there could be huge settlements as a result of mounting evidence of BP’s criminal negligence [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

Through interviews with scientists, government officials, journalists (including Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell who examined the Gulf spill in his article ‘The Poisoning’), activists (Peter Fonda, Amy Smart and Grammy-winner Jason Mraz who also contributed an original song), New Orleans attorney Stuart Smith and Gulf States natives, The Big Fix recounts the events surrounding the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The Big Fix reveals the powerful political and corporate system that put profits over the health and long-term sustainability of people and the environment.

“That report summarised what we already knew, and it will help establish the punitive damage case against the defendant [BP],” New Orleans-based attorney Stuart Smith, representing more than 1,000 cases against BP, told Al Jazeera.

Smith has been litigating against oil companies for 25 years, and in 2001 was lead counsel in a case that resulted in a $1bn verdict against ExxonMobil.

“The fastest way to lose a toxic tort case is to rely on the government or the defendant to collect the evidence,” explained Smith, whose firm has spent more than $2m for its client’s cases by collecting samples and data and having them analysed by experts.

And their well from hell may turn out to be the vampire that no one can drive a stake through. As veteran New Orleans litigator and oil industry nemesis Stuart Smith describes in his blog;

Both companies, BP and Transocean, know how much is at stake here. The Coast Guard laid it out very clearly: “The responsible party may be financially accountable for debris removal costs and damages resulting from the pollution incident.” And just to clarify: The fact that the Coast Guard has ordered Transocean to find the source doesn’t mean Transocean is ultimately responsible for the new leakage or the resulting pollution damages. USCG Capt. Burton simply said this of the possibility that either the damaged riser or the Deepwater Horizon wreckage is the culprit: “Transocean will come up with the best way to determine if they are the responsible source.”

Stuart Smith, an attorney in New Orleans, broke the news of a newly-sighted oil spill in mid-August in the general vicinity where BP’s oil spill began. Shortly thereafter, a Times-Picayune story quoted a spokesperson from BP saying that the sheen was likely from a different and abandoned well – certainly not BP’s well at Mississippi Canyon block 252 (MC 252) – Deepwater Horizon’s Macondo well.

It also will play an important role in upcoming lawsuits against BP filed by thousands of people along the Gulf Coast, according to Stuart Smith, a New Orleans lawyer representing more than 1,000 fishermen, business owners and others.

Industry leaders have complained since the accident that it takes much longer to get permits, costing the offshore industry millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs. Officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement said they’re being vigilant and disagreed that the pace of approval has slowed unfairly.

“What we’ll start to see is more restrictions and additional paperwork requirements,” Smith said. “It’s going to further slow down the permitting process.”

According to New Orleans Attorney Stuart Smith who litigates against major oil companies, “Oil has been surfacing all over the northern quadrant of the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks now. Reports of slicks that meander for kilometres and huge expanses of oil sheen that look like phantom islands are becoming common again.”

One of the voices sounding the alarm most loudly is Stuart H. Smith, who describes himself on his blog as “an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.” He was featured in a story by MSNBC.com in December that says his law firm has assembled a team of scientists who contend the government seafood-testing program is flawed.

Specifically, Stuart contends in the story, the government has focused on ensuring the seafood is free of the cancer-causing components in crude oil while overlooking other harmful elements. “And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage,” MSNBC’s story says.

That wasn’t gratitude Stuart H Smith conveyed in his diary, Thanks BP for Making Louisiana’s Beaches Among the Most Polluted in America: “According to a new study from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Louisiana has the highest rate of contaminated beachwater of any state (that has shoreline). In 2010, the Year of the Spill, 37 percent of the beachwater samples taken in Louisiana exceeded public health samples. […] Even Ohio, which borders the heavily industrialized shores of Lake Erie, came in a distant second with 21 percent—and the rest fell off dramatically from there.”

Stuart H. Smith, Esq., and oil and gas attorney of nearly 30 years experience, discusses the type of well design BP chose for the Macondo formation. BP considered different designs for the well casing, the equipment that extends from the wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf, through the rock to the oil reservoir. Mr. Smith discusses why the type of casing BP chose was inappropriate for an exploratory well, and reviews documents his team uncovered that show BP specifically knew of and disregarded the risks of a blowout under these circumstances.

“The crisis in the Gulf goes well beyond the oil and dispersant from last year’s BP spill,” said New Orleans attorney Stuart Smith. “There is also lots of radioactive material being dumped into our waters year after year by oil and gas companies. And as we know, radioactive material poses a long-term threat because it takes so long, in many cases hundreds of years, to break down.”

New Orleans native and leading environmental attorney Stuart H. Smith after reviewing the report commented;

BP has come up short on everything from fairly compensating victims to failing to fund the removal of cleanup-equipment debris to dragging its feet on providing mental health services for those people who need it. That’s reprehensible behavior, but what makes matters even worse is that our federal government has abdicated its responsibility to intervene on behalf of spill victims. That’s unforgivable in my mind.

Stuart Smith, of the law firm SmithStag, represents more than 900 clients with claims against BP. Most have received emergency payments, he said, but no additional compensation in “quite some time.”

“There are all kinds of reasons,” he said in a phone interview, adding that “a bunch have had problems with record-keeping.”

For clients whose waiting period ended in denied claims, Smith said, his firm would take the issue to civil court. Those denied claims larger than $250,000 will eventually be heard by a not-yet-formed appeals panel. When the appeals panel begins operating, decisions are expected to be made within 14 days of the claims file, according to GCCF’s site.

Stuart Smith, a New Orleans attorney who is one of the founding partners of Smith/Stag a law firm focusing on environmental law, summarized the court’s decision.

SS: There is a rule of law that courts are free to prohibit false or misleading speech by a defendant and may prohibit a defendant from using speech that is coercive or prone to abuse. Judge Barbier in finding that the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) run by Mr. Feinberg was an arm of British Petroleum and not in fact independent allowed him to apply this rule of law. Judge Barbier prohibited the Gulf Coast Claims Facility from continuing to use false and misleading speech. The judge required that the GCCF, Mr. Feinberg and his law firm to refrain from contacting claimants they know are represented by lawyers, refrain from referring to the GCCF, Kenneth Feinberg, or Feinberg/Rozen as neutral or completely independent from BP. The ruling also requires that potential victims be advised that they have a right to consult with an attorney and to refrain from giving legal advice to unrepresented claimants that they should not hire a lawyer and advise the claimants that the pro-bono attorney and community representatives retained to assist GCCF claimants are being compensated directly or indirectly by BP. In my opinion this order casts doubt as to the validity of the eighty thousand final releases obtained so far by the GCCF.

We do a lot of radiation litigation and are following the situation in Japan very closely,” said Stuart Smith, an attorney with Smith Stag in New Orleans. “We have retained experts to monitor the situation and advise us when and if significant harm has occurred in territories owned or controlled by the U.S.. That would create jurisdiction in U.S. courts.”

“I’m concerned that once they file this paper, they’re entangled in the lawsuit,” said Stuart Smith, a lawyer who has promised dozens of clients that he would work to get them a fair settlement through Feinberg’s process.

New Orleans attorney Stuart Smith said he advised his clients, among them hoteliers, restaurant owners and fishermen, to drop their suits so he could negotiate with Mr. Feinberg “in good faith.” He filed motions to dismiss the suits last month.

Mr. Smith, who is part of the group that is aligning with Mr. Becnel, said other plaintiffs could bail on the federal litigation if the group’s settlement talks are successful.

Stuart H. Smith, a lawyer in New Orleans who has said he would be interested in exploring settlements, said he had “serious concerns” about the plan. “I don’t think that it sufficiently takes into consideration the uncertainty factor,” Mr. Smith said.

Stuart H. Smith, Esq., of the law firm Smith Stag, LLC., was leading the charge, rallying additional litigants to his side through a website called Oil Spill Action.

He’s the attorney who secured a verdict awarding over $1 billion over the radium contamination of leased land due to oil drilling.

“Mr. Smith’s litigation experience includes a lawsuit against Ashland Oil for contaminating the Lee aquifer, once one of the largest sources of fresh water for residents in eastern Kentucky,” his self-published bio claims. “He also sued Chevron Corporation for damages associated with that company’s contamination of the groundwater in the rural town of Brookhaven, Mississippi. His firm also represents clients injured by chemicals and defective drugs.”

A New Orleans law firm is challenging government assurances that Gulf Coast seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the BP oil spill, saying it poses “a significant danger to public health.”

Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage.

“I believe the government and BP are trying to downplay the damage,” said Smith. “If they are successful my clients won’t get full compensation for damages.”

Stuart Smith of the Smith Stag law firm says the firm’s independent sampling of Gulf seafood contradicts the “safe” label that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the FDA give Gulf seafood in the wake of the BP oil disaster. Smith Stag represents several environmental and fisheries groups, including the United Commercial Fisherman’s Association.

Smith’s clients refuse to fish, despite the federal government’s reopening of fishing areas in the Gulf, citing evidence that seafood is not safe to eat and requires more testing before it can be declared safe.

“BP does not want to see a trial, they want to quietly sweep this thing under the rug,” Stuart Smith, a lawyer in Louisiana, says. “But I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure a jury finds out what happened.”

The information contained on this web site is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The content of this web site may not reflect the most current legal developments and is not guaranteed to be correct, complete or up to date. This web site is not intended to create an attorney-client relationship between you and the group of independent law firms, or any individual lawyer or law firm, and you should not act or rely upon any information without seeking the advice of an attorney.

Please be aware that if you communicate with any law firm through this web site in connection with a matter on which we do not represent you, your communication may not be treated as privileged or confidential. If you communicate with us via email in connection with a matter on which we do represent you, please note that email is not secure and can be intercepted by third parties; therefore, you should avoid sending confidential or sensitive information unless adequately encrypted.

Unless otherwise specified, the attorneys listed on this web site are not certified by any state board of legal specialization.